Prior art IT-resources in enterprise networks are subjected to continuous changes due to dynamically changing workload, increasing efforts to use the Internet and offer web based services, and due to permanently increasing storage needs. As customers deploy virtualization and grid technologies in order to help maximize their IT-investment, they also need workload scheduling programs that enable them to centrally manage and automate application workloads across heterogeneous environments.
A prior art workload-scheduling tool is provided, for example, by International Business Machines Corp. within the Tivoli product family. The available Tivoli Workload Scheduler (TWS) version at the time of writing is 8.2. A datasheet of the Tivoli Workload Scheduler can be downloaded, for example on Jan. 9, 2008 at the following website address: “ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/software/tivoli/datasheets/ds-scheduler-0551006.pdf”. This prior art scheduler product helps to optimize storage environments and workload distribution by delivering integrated and modular solutions that simplify and automate management of workload. In particular, this prior art workload scheduler product automates, monitors and controls the flow of work through an enterprise's entire IT-infrastructure on both local and remote systems. This includes the management of the entire IT-processings including the management of batch jobs.
The Tivoli Workload Scheduler allows planning jobs for execution, resolves interdependencies between jobs and other processing tasks and launches and tracks each job. FIG. 1 shows a prior art TWS processing in general. A TWS Master 12 creates a scheduling plan and controls a job's launching and status on TWS Agents 14 according to this plan. A TWS Agent 14 is a TWS client implementable on any machine or application, which locally executes the control determined by the central Master 12. Agents 14 report to the Master 12 about the status of their jobs. In case of failure, the Master 12 indicates warnings by means of its Alarm System 15.
It is typical that enterprises extend the hardware constellation in their enterprise data processing environments where workload scheduler products are employed. Such extension is manifested by an increasing number of Agents 14 to be included into a Scheduling System and an increasing number of Jobs, which are to be taken under control of the workload scheduler (scheduling system). A scheduling system (workload scheduler) here refers to a workload management solution having typically a number of agents 14 and a central master 12. The scheduling system controls various resources in a data processing system or, in other words, in a computing system.
As a result of extending the Scheduling System, system administrators may be suddenly confronted with negative side effects such as too long response times of the system, a delay when launching important jobs, etc. The system performance deterioration may be completely unexpected for system administration staff.